THE all-too-frequent reports of young lives being lost to brutality has left the country’s education sector in mourning, with the portfolio minister Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon condemning the acts while labelling them “senseless and heart-rending”.

The minister’s comments came on Tuesday as Jamaicans reacted with shock and horror to news that the charred and decomposed body of 13-year-old Shantina Sergeant was found under a zinc beside a burnt-out refrigerator in Baillieston, Clarendon, with her father 46-year-old Lawrence Oliver Sergeant, otherwise called Marcus, named as a person of interest by the police.

The week had opened with news that four-year-old Shannon Gordon was one of five people fatally shot as gunmen opened fire in the community of Commodore in Linstead, St Catherine, on Sunday.

“We are mourning today. When I leave here I have to go to one of the schools and I know it’s sadness on that campus. Leaving here in this moment of lightness to go to that school, and I have to do it too often, way too often,” said Morris Dixon while delivering her address at the fifth-anniversary and ribbon-cutting ceremony at Christel House Jamaica in Spanish Town, St Catherine.

She pointed to the robbery of potential and promise with the killing of children who were not given a chance at life.

“Those children should be dancing. They should be doing their skits. They should be at school learning about the world and dreaming big about their future. But they’re not here with us because of senseless violence,” she said as she pointed to the detrimental nature of residual trauma.

She also shared her worry over families dismantled and broken due to the impact of violence, and noted that the shock waves do not just end in the homes, but in the communities, and classrooms, where people also mourn.

“It [crime] does not help them. It doesn’t help their brain to develop. That trauma affects their brain for life. And so, as a country, I applaud the work of the JCF [Jamaica Constabulary Force], the work they are doing to bring murders down because every one less murder that we have means one less community and family that’s traumatised. So this work has to continue,” said Morris Dixon.

She underscored the education ministry’s growing focus on mental health and psychosocial support, and noted that counsellors, psychologists, and other professionals are available to help students and families affected by violence.

Morris Dixon called on Jamaicans to assist in making the country a place in which children can thrive and not exist in survival mode. And she emphasised that children need to feel and be safe wherever they go.

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An undated photo of 13-year-old Shantina Sergeant in a frame at Christiana High School on Tuesday.

Educators, counsellors and police at Rosemount Primary School on Tuesday to provide comfort to students following the fatal shooting of their schoolmate four-year-old Shannon Gordon in Commodore, St Catherine, on Sunday. (Photo: Llewellyn Wynter)